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Exhibition

Diane KW. At World's End

15 July 2013 to 15 September 2013

From 15 July to 15 September 2013, the Groninger Museum will present
an exceptional installation entitled At World’s End by Diane KW, a
professional ceramist from Hawaii. She is fascinated by the shards of
Chinese porcelain that emerged from the wreck of the Geldermalsen, a VOC
(Dutch East India Company) ship that sunk in the South China Sea in
1752. The Groninger Museum is the proud owner of a complete collection
of porcelain from this ship, but also has much broken material. Diane KW
has used a number of these shards as bearers of texts and images, of
spam for example, which is thus immortalized on an indestructible
carrier.

With the aid of a photographic technique, she burned
texts from spam messages and photos of Geldermalsen porcelain on the
shard. This produced a confusing visual effect. As an artist she is
making a statement: the worthless shard has become a museological
object, old stories acquire a new, topical layer.

The title At
World’s End refers to pirates, shipwrecks and undersea treasures
(similar to a film in the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' series) and also to
her homeland of Hawaii where she lives and works, far out in the ocean.

Some of the shards in the series will be added to the collection of the Groninger Museum as a gift.

At
World’s End is a part of the exhibition entitled Draken en Lange Lijzen
(Dragons and Lange Lijzen). The series has been specially produced for
the Groninger Museum.

Diane KW has exhibited her work in
galleries on Hawaii and elsewhere in the USA. She has participated in
group exhibitions, and was represented at international ceramics
exhibitions in South Korea in 2010-2011. Photos of her work have also
been published in various books and catalogues. Her ceramic work has
been included in the collections of the Pacific University Museum
(Oregon, USA), the Honolulu Museum of Art (Hawaii) and the Nanchang
University Ceramics Museum (Nanchang, China).